Class Size at DCPS Brent Elementary in Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS definitely doesn't want Brent to cut PreS3, partly because in-boundary special ed kids get first dibs on entry to ECE programs. DCPS doesn't want these kids to develop more expensive-to-address academic/developmental problems for lack of access to high quality ECE.

Brent can't expect to convince DCPS to pony up for a massive renovation (either total gut job or raze the building and start over on the foundation) that will cost tens of millions of dollars if they're pushing for changes system leaders are hostile to. That's just not how renovation budgets are secured in DCPS.

This is not a real problem. IB 3 year old early stages kids could just get spots at any of the other DCPS PK3s surrounding the Brent neighborhood. All of those schools hold pk3 spots for early stages kids.

However, it’s stupid to cut pk3 when you could reduce or eliminate overcrowding by simply not admitting OOB kids.

Signed,
Don’t have a dog in this fight

Reducing or eliminating OOB offers would not fix the problem. There are not enough of them and they are spread out - especially in the lower grades. When there are up to 75 IB kids per year there is a space problem, and that is what is happening in the lower years.

[Anonymous]

The building's capacity is listed as 325. This year, there are around 460 kids. The campus is too small for more than a few classroom trailers to fit on it. Each school year, roughly 25 more in-boundary kids are enrolled than in the previous year.

The K cohort (close to 80 kids) has been more than 95% in-boundary for the past two years. The OOB and PreS3 kids contribute little to crowding. As the last pp points out, the IB population is causing the crowding in a too-small building for Brent in 2018. Yet DCPS has no plans to renovate the building.

[Anonymous]

With only about 10 kids in each of the two 5th grade classes, crowding younger grades would help fill out the budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The building's capacity is listed as 325. This year, there are around 460 kids. The campus is too small for more than a few classroom trailers to fit on it. Each school year, roughly 25 more in-boundary kids are enrolled than in the previous year.

The K cohort (close to 80 kids) has been more than 95% in-boundary for the past two years. The OOB and PreS3 kids contribute little to crowding. As the last pp points out, the IB population is causing the crowding in a too-small building for Brent in 2018. Yet DCPS has no plans to renovate the building.

The answer isn’t necessarily renovating. First DCPS should redraw boundaries for all the Hill and surrounding area schools.

[Anonymous]

Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The building's capacity is listed as 325. This year, there are around 460 kids. The campus is too small for more than a few classroom trailers to fit on it. Each school year, roughly 25 more in-boundary kids are enrolled than in the previous year.

The K cohort (close to 80 kids) has been more than 95% in-boundary for the past two years. The OOB and PreS3 kids contribute little to crowding. As the last pp points out, the IB population is causing the crowding in a too-small building for Brent in 2018. Yet DCPS has no plans to renovate the building.

The answer isn’t necessarily renovating. First DCPS should redraw boundaries for all the Hill and surrounding area schools.

Yes it is.

The infrastructure of the Brent building is slowly but surely falling apart. The roof leaks a lot and can only be patched so many times. The library gets closed when the roof leaks badly. The building has half a dozen HVAC systems, with condensation leaking into the walls like crazy. The system gets fixed, breaks, gets fixed again, breaks again. The boiler system hasn't been updated in decades. A big renovation is inevitable. The only questions are when, for how much and where will the students go into a swing space and how long will they be there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What good would that do when the DCPS schools whose boundaries abut Brent's are also overcrowded? On the Brent District's southern border, Van Ness is likely to need classroom trailers to get to 5th grade in two years. On the northern border, Peabody can't absorb anywhere near all the 3-6 year olds applying to PreS3 and PreK4 in its catchment area and has large K classes. On the western border, Tyler Spanish immersion has an in-boundary waiting list. Where the logic in DCPS shifting Brent's crowding issues to one or more neighboring schools?

What's needed is political attention to crowding in popular schools with high SES populations all over the City. What was DCPS thinking when they auctioned off one old school building after another to developers on the Hill 10-20 years back? Let us guess, they weren't thinking about anything but getting the cash for the real estate.

20 years back you would not have lived on the hill. I needed to get something to my brother who worked at the Navy Yard. He told me to keep driving around until I saw him and make sure my doors were locked. I grew up and lived in Urban areas - but this was the reality or being safe.

We've lived on the Hill for over 20 years, providing for quick commutes to the Congressional offices where we work. We were married for over a decade before we had kids and bought in-boundary for Brent.

We've watched the population of school-aged kids in the neighborhood explode since we arrived in the late 90s. We've also watched one classy old DCPS building after another get auctioned off to a condo developer. The myopic game started with the Carberry school on 5th St NE. The Pierce school on Maryland was next, then the Lennox School on 5th in SE, and finally the Bryan school on Independence. Insanity.

At least DCPS has finally stopped selling off school real estate around here, buildings that could have been used to catch overflow from today's overcrowded schools.

Aside from possibly the Lennox building, those former schools would have been insufficient in size or suitability for modern ES. Add to that the non-existent demand at the time for additional public schools from either DCPS or charter sector.

And you're overlooking the more obvious sell off -- the Hine MS building. Potentially better target only because it could be razed in the historic district with fewer limits than historic school houses.

[Anonymous]

While I can’t respond to space concerns, Brent’s building is much, much nicer than other schools. For example, have you visited SWS recently? Did you see what Watkins looked like before its renovation? What about Eliot Hine?

I’ve been inside Brent dozens of times and have always been struck by how much nicer it is than any DCPS school my kids have attended.

This kind of privileged whining undercuts the whole thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While I can’t respond to space concerns, Brent’s building is much, much nicer than other schools. For example, have you visited SWS recently? Did you see what Watkins looked like before its renovation? What about Eliot Hine?

I’ve been inside Brent dozens of times and have always been struck by how much nicer it is than any DCPS school my kids have attended.

This kind of privileged whining undercuts the whole thread.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

is tyler over-crowded?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

Here are the schools on/near Capitol Hill with excess capacity, based on the 2017-8 OSSE enrollment stats and the capacity from the 2016-7 DCPS utilization study:

Browne, Walker-Jones, Miner, Savoy, Tyler, Payne, CHM@L. Based on that, here are few suggestions:

1. Remove middle school from CHM@L and instantly create space for several additional ECE classrooms on the Hill.

2. Move bilingual program at Tyler to one of the extremely underenrolled schools (I'd suggest Walker-Jones, which is more centrally located than Browne) and make it a citywide magnet with no boundary. Give existing Tyler bilingual students and their siblings preference for the dual language program at Walker Jones. Then shrink Brent's boundaries, sending some of its students to Tyler. Alternately, cluster Brent and Tyler, making one of them all bilingual and one not; allow parents to rank which one they'd prefer.

3. Shrink Maury's boundaries, sending more students to Miner and Payne.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

Here are the schools on/near Capitol Hill with excess capacity, based on the 2017-8 OSSE enrollment stats and the capacity from the 2016-7 DCPS utilization study:

Browne, Walker-Jones, Miner, Savoy, Tyler, Payne, CHM@L. Based on that, here are few suggestions:

1. Remove middle school from CHM@L and instantly create space for several additional ECE classrooms on the Hill.

2. Move bilingual program at Tyler to one of the extremely underenrolled schools (I'd suggest Walker-Jones, which is more centrally located than Browne) and make it a citywide magnet with no boundary. Give existing Tyler bilingual students and their siblings preference for the dual language program at Walker Jones. Then shrink Brent's boundaries, sending some of its students to Tyler. Alternately, cluster Brent and Tyler, making one of them all bilingual and one not; allow parents to rank which one they'd prefer.

3. Shrink Maury's boundaries, sending more students to Miner and Payne.

To add to this, if DCPS feels it needs a Montessori middle school program (I'm not sure DCPS either has or thinks it has such a need) it doesn't have to be at CHML. The other DCPS schools with Montessori programs are Langdon and Nalle, so there are other middle schools with plenty of space that could host a city-wide Montessori program in one wing with preference to graduates of DCPS Montessori elementaries. I'd suggest Brookland MS, since it could then be nearby Langdon as well as many of the Montessori charters (they wouldn't have preference, but if the families like Montessori and their schools only go through 5th they'd be used to the commute already).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

is tyler over-crowded?

Tyler has the highest enrollment of Hill schools in one building, I believe. 525. The capacity is about 540 max, I think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

is tyler over-crowded?

Tyler has the highest enrollment of Hill schools in one building, I believe. 525. The capacity is about 540 max, I think.

that doesn't make it over enrolled. in the last facility analysis (2016) it rated as 91% ? 96% utilized (4 of 5 in rubric).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great, please tell us how that would work. Give us a rough idea of where the City should be drawing these new school boundaries.

As was pointed out pages ago, the several DCPS elementary schools in the catchment areas bordering Brent's are also getting crowded.

As far as I can tell, as the Cap Hill baby boom fails to abate, DCPS needs to do the following, or some combo of the following...

open one or two new Ward 6 elementary schools
pony up to expand existing crowded facilities substantially
cynically let conditions in the most crowded schools deteriorate to the point that fewer parents enroll

is tyler over-crowded?

Tyler has the highest enrollment of Hill schools in one building, I believe. 525. The capacity is about 540 max, I think.

that doesn't make it over enrolled. in the last facility analysis (2016) it rated as 91% ? 96% utilized (4 of 5 in rubric).

it's actually pretty well aligned between available space and utilization.